Woman To Climb African Peak

Although she has never climbed a mountain higher than 4,000 feet, next summer 50-year-old Valerie S. McDyer plans to trek 19,500 feet up Mt. Kilimanjaro to fundraise for the Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair (HCNR).

HCNR is a non-profit organization that supports research of diseases that impair normal brain function, like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis.

“My mother has Alzheimer’s, and she lives in a nursing home in Ireland,” says McDyer, whose unique fundraising career began three years ago with a walk for breast cancer research and has since taken her to South Africa. “I thought I’d do it for her.”

McDyer’s experience highlights the Harvard-based center’s purpose, says Adrian J. Ivinson, the director of HCNR.

“So many of us have some connection to neurodegenerative diseases,” he says. “They are so prevalent in society, so it’s not unusual that interest comes about.”

Funding Research

Although interest in HCNR’s research is widespread, Ivinson says the center has never actively solicited donations like McDyer’s.

“In that respect it was lucky, because a Harvard-based center doesn’t have a precedent for this fundraising. We are surprised and delighted,” Ivinson says.

At present, HCNR has a sufficient operating budget, Ivinson says, but the vast majority of its funds originate from a single anonymous donor who gave $37.5 million to jumpstart the organization in 2001.

“We are absolutely resource-limited,” Ivinson says. “We have no shortage of ideas, and there are many new programs we could start if we had the funds. We’re impatient for progress that will make a difference for friends and family.”

The funds that HCNR will gain from McDyer’s climb are not only helpful for their programs, but essential for the future of biomedical research in neuroscience.

“The number of Alzheimer’s patients will double in the next 50 years,” Ivinson says. “It speaks to the urgency that is driving the center forward.”

While searching online for an organization that raised money for research on Alzheimer’s disease, McDyer came across the center.

She says she particularly liked the center’s approach of working with seven Boston hospitals to research neurodegenerative disease.

“I liked the collaboration of science from various hospitals. It’s totally new the way they collaborate with different groups and share information,” McDyer says. “They produce quicker than organizations on just one track.”

McDyer’s goal is to raise more than $10,000 for HCNR—a total greater than any of her past fundraising efforts.

A History of Fundraising

McDyer, a Somerville resident who works in technology, found her love of fundraising by chance.

Concerned about women who couldn’t afford mammograms, McDyer

started off her fundraising efforts with two breast cancer walks three years ago.

She says that although she had always contributed to fundraising campaigns, she’d never participated in one before.

Following the breast cancer walks, a series of coincidences brought her to a seven-day, 75-mile trek across the South African wilderness last summer to raise money for AIDS research. In this effort, she raised $10,000—mostly from individuals she knew and matching company grants.

But she has never climbed a mountain to raise money.

Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro

McDyer’s interest in Mt. Kilimanjaro was piqued by the showing of the IMAX film Kilimanjaro: To the Roof of Africa six months ago at the Museum of Science in Boston.

She was intrigued and began to pick up books about Africa’s tallest mountain.

McDyer then contacted Tusker Trail and Safari Co., a company that arranges group climbs in Africa. McDyer decided to leave Boston on July 4, start the climb on July 8 and reach the top on July 13.

“I wanted to reach the top the night of a full moon,” she says. “And starting off on the fourth of July, American Independence Day, might inspire people to sponsor me.”

Mt. Kilimanjaro is far more accessible than a mountain like Everest, says Eddie W. Frank, the founder of Tusker Trail and Safari Co.

“Almost anyone can do it,” he says.“I’ve climbed it 21 times in 27 years, and we’ve run hundreds of climbs.”

The climb is dangerous, however. There is half as much oxygen at the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro as at sea level. Frank says about two people die every year on the mountain.

“It’s like breathing with one lung through a wet towel,” he says.

Still, McDyer says she doesn’t need special equipment for the climb besides oxygen—just sheer stamina.

“It’s endurance more than anything else—being able to last through the whole thing,” McDyer says.

Once a month, McDyer scales Mt. Monadnock, a 3,500-foot-high peak 50 miles from Boston, and she will use this exercise as one aspect of her preparation.

She will also work out regularly, and go to Colorado to get acclimated to the oxygen-poor atmosphere.

McDyer also says this won’t be last her last climb for charity.

“My boyfriend said there are seven continents, and I should climb a mountain on each every year for seven years,” McDyer says, laughing. “I don’t know if I can think that far in advance, but I’d like to do one thing for charity each year.”